Integers and Floats

apologies in advance here, i am a noob to Max (version 6)
I’m a sound engineer just dipping my toe in the water with this sort of thing, so forgive any ignorance on my part. and i apologies AGAIN, because this seems like such a fundamental part of the program, that it’s probably been asked before. but here goes:

I’ve built a small patch, for one part of it all i want to do is add an integer with the resulting calculation from a string of other objects which are a decimal value.

Is this possible? because my patch keeps giving me integer values when i try to do it.

This has nothing to do with the previous question, could either of you gentlemen advise me on how to control the random parameters of playback with a slider?

to add some context here, part of the patch i’m trying to make has a random playback set for sound FX. the randomisation will play the sound at a speed of 0.9 to 1.1 of the original play back speed. however what i would like to do is have a slider incorporated into this so that at the slider’s minimum value the will play the file back at its original speed, and as the value of the slider increases it allows the randomisation to affect the playback, meaning that the slider at its maximum value will generate the playback speed between 0.9 and 1.1.
so that someone who doesn’t know anything about Max can intuitively use the slider to set how much randomisation they want the patch to apply.

Once again Max has beaten me.
The patch i’m creating was to be a useful tool for randomising qualities of a sound. i’ve managed to get it to select folder contents to work with and select the audio files inside at random, the patch then applies some random EQ changes and thanks to the help of evan i was able to incorporate the pitch/playback randomisation. i’ve been trying to make the thing polyphonic now, but when i had multiple instances of my poly~ object it was playing sounds all at the same time, instead of sequentially when the button was hit.
i tired to use a trigger, counter, pack and route object in series to allocated the sounds to different Poly~ objects but it wasn’t working the way i wanted (as i say all instances were playing at the same time). all i want to be able to do is to make sure that the last sound isn’t cut off by the current one. would any of you mind having a look at my patch (its not elegant so forgive the mess) and advise me on what i’m doing wrong?